The dragon's harem

The first law was that while vampires can move during the day, protected by Eris’s will from Amaterasu’s sun, they are forbidden from committing any acts that could expose their true nature, and will be put under Eris’s will to shackle their powers.

Due to that, from this dawn, vampires would lose their access to their blood magic during the day, alongside most of their abnormal power and speed, while maintaining their durability. They can still run away and defend themselves, but they can’t be the active aggressors under Eris’s sun.

Another rule was that from this dawn, vampires cannot feed from the faithful of any divine, to not spark animosity between Eris and the other gods. But she did secure a food source for them. While Eris was one goddess, she had two separate churches, one for Sol and one for Los. The faithful who live and work in the dark side of Eris’s domain{Los} can donate blood to the vampires, and get a blessing from that.

Vampires also get access through the castle and Eris’s church to criminals who are sentenced to death, but not life imprisonment. Even now, there were around a hundred people waiting to be executed for various crimes in the castle’s dungeons. They were going to be given to the vampire lords instead. That way, they could be of use.

But the rule that surprised all vampires was the one that set laws for the Pure-Blooded Vampires. As the majority of vampires were turned and very few of them managed to bear children, those rare few who numbered less than a thousand were now called noble. From the moment they are born, they would be protected by Arad and Eris to make sure they aren’t killed, abused by their parent for their pure blood, or left to rot.

The main reason for this was Therisa and what she lived through. She is a Pure-Blooded vampire, yet her mother wanted to raise her human, which greatly stunted her growth. The same way it was wrong to raise a human child as a vampire, it is wrong to raise a vampire child as a human. But that wasn’t the only reason.

Pure-Blooded vampires are extremely powerful, and if they don’t master their powers by the time they fully grow, there is a huge risk of them going insane with hunger and going on a murder spree. Eris also gave the vampires a stern warning; the Pure-Blooded don’t need to actively call Arad or Eris for them to help. Of course, if the Pure-blooded wanted to live in a certain way, like a human life, for example. They can make that decision on their own after they have grown up and can fully control their power. The main problem Eris and Arad had was the possibility of them going on a rampage.

Then there was the important part, and it was about the abominations. All vampires were ordered to maintain a clean link with Arad to be able to summon him in case an abomination showed up, and they were clearly warned that even the weakest of abominations can be a deadly threat if left unchecked.

But that wasn’t all, as right now, an entire underground city was getting built in Meryem’s tunnels under Sara’s jurisdiction, and the vampires were going to have a base there, and they were given permission to build a kingdom for them in the cavern where the criminal’s city of Rita once was.

It took Arad and Eris a while to nominate and choose several vampire representatives, but eventually, they got it done in a little over an hour. Those representatives had to have several important qualities: the ability to summon Arad, a power above the regular vampire lords, and a good history of not being a murderous tyrant.

Then, at the end of it all, Eris made one thing clear. While all vampires now answer to her, and all those in the vampire church bow to her, Arad is the one above them all.

Getting done with the vampires, Arad and Eris teleported back to Sol’s church and landed in the sacred sanctum. In there, the priests and nuns were getting the place ready. In an hour or two, Eris would march through the entire capital and stop here at the end, where she would ascend back to her heaven.

It almost never happens, but today was the day, and those nuns and priests were almost panicking as they cleaned every spec of dust with meticulous obsession. Their divine was going to walk through those hallways; they had to not just be spotless, but the incarnation of perfection.

“I can almost see my reflection on it. What are you cleaning?” Eris asked, and the poor priest who was polishing the windows turned back, saw her fall, and fell unconscious on the spot. Everyone in the sacred sanctum cried; some passed out, and the rest all prostrated themselves toward Eris.

“Your Sacred Divinity, to grace this mortal place with your presence…” One of the higher clergy, a priestess crawled toward her. “We were in the middle of… making sure this place is up to standards.”

Arad looked around. “What standard… you’re cleaning the already clean walls over and over…” He sighed, “Who ordered this?”

The priestess looked up at them. “We got advice from Amaterasu’s clergy. Per their words, you clean until the sunlight cleanly reflects off the marble walls. If we don’t have marble, we either clean it repeatedly from dusk to dawn, or until the hands bleed.”

Eris sighed. “I’m pretty sure they were just messing with you. Clean it normally,” She then walked past them with Arad, reached the feet of her statue, and gave it a sharp glare. “I don’t like it.”

“What? You can’t expect stone to perfectly mimic the beauty of a goddess.” Arad looked at her, and she giggled. “Not that, I just don’t like having statues of myself. I’m much rather something symbolic.”

“I, too, hate them. In the homeland, I got them to use a tarp with my image embroidered on it in a heavily stylized manner. It doesn’t look anything like me, but it got the people’s imagination running wild.” That sharp voice, no one could mistake it. Above them, Amaterasu was floating on a pale white cloud, looking at the face of Eris’s statue.

“Embroidery… that might work.” Thinking about it for a second, Eris found the idea appealing. A stylized image of her with a purple sun in the background would look far better than a statue; it would look like a mural. She could even have it depict an entire event, like the day she ascended into divinity.

“Then let’s get Isabelle working on it.” Arad smiled and then looked up toward Amaterasu. “Speaking of that, why are you here? You didn’t just hear us talk and show up.”

Amaterasu was silent for a second, and then, she slowly turned around, looked at Eris’s faithful, and with a smile, asked them to leave. As they did, she fully locked the inner sanctum.

“I’ve been killing too many abominations that Death cannot keep up with recycling them.” She shrugged as her cloud floated down, “The war is going well for now. So, besides any sleeper cells, we’re mostly safe from the abominations.”

She then looked at Arad. “And, after you finish everything in this world, you can now safely use Yggdrasil’s roots to teleport between worlds. You can move around using Vorvadoss’s magic, but that consumes a lot of energy.”

“And I’ll have to deal with the pests in her roots. Give and take.” He replied, and Amaterasu giggled, “You’re now starting to get it. But, I got another piece of news for you.”

“New?” Arad lifted an eyebrow and Eris frowned. “What’s up with that grin on your face?”

Amaterasu looked at them with a smug face. “Well, a certain Metallic drakaina came looking for Arad, and I’ve managed to trick and send her away to a faraway world.”

“What drakaina?” He asked with a puzzled face, but then, he remembered something that the Metallic Queen told him before. “Don’t tell me she is the Cursed Metal one…”

“Yep, Cursed Metal Elder Drakaina. You’ll meet her once you start going out to liberate the worlds, but I’ll warn you here. Her mere presence in a world is enough to erase all life from it, and in combat, she is almost as powerful as Linda, without the time trickery of course.”

Arad rubbed his face. “I… don’t need more…”

“You don’t have to take her in… I came here to give you a suggestion. With her size, she’ll provide you with enough food to evolve all the way to your wyrm stage. So, I suggest killing and eating her.” She started floating away.

As Amaterasu left, Arad and Eris called the clergy back in and then teleported back to the castle, specifically to Merida’s workshop in the private quarter. It was time for Arad and Eris to get dressed for the march.